Hey,
I'm new to the Nordic Semiconductors and wanted to get started out trying to learn about Bluetooth Mesh.
I've been reading a lot of posts and trying to get some hardware in the pipeline.
From what I've read the best way to get started is with a nRF52 DK which can program itself and other nRF52 chips.
I know the example Light Control Demo you need 4 boards:
- One PCA10028 or PCA10040 development board for the client.
- Three development boards or dongles (PCA10028, PCA10031, or PCA10040) for the servers.
I ordered the nRF52 DK and also ordered a Nordic Thingy:52 But after getting the demo going I’d like to expand it and try to do more. I’d like to have maybe 5-10 additional boards and would rather not shell out $200-400 to have 5-10 nRF52 DK’s
Usually what I'll do for hardware development is take a dev kit and then strip out what I don't need and then design my own hardware with just what I need. I was thinking I'd take this approach with the nRF52 DK.
I'm wanting to just have a bunch of devices to experiment with Mesh. so I figured I'd strip the dev kit down to the minimum stuff, say 4 buttons, 4 LEDs (so I can both inputs and indicators) and just have the battery / JLINK and go from there. (Obviously I'd need the necessary hardware to make the nRF52832 run as well)
but upon further reading is seems some people are getting boards from Ali-Express / ebay that have some basics and work fine.
I did some looking and found these: www.ebay.com/.../192237288810 - I'm not sure if it'll let me post a link yet since I'm a new user so if it won't look up ebay item 192237288810
Here's the item description "nRF52832 E73-2G4M04S Low Power 2.4GHz SMD Wireless Module with PCB & IPX Antenna " and it runs just over $5
So I'm assuming I could just layout a board that this ebay board could be soldered onto and then on my board I just need the JLINK connector, 4 buttons and leds and should be good to go.
Or in your guys' opinion is there a better way? Perhaps a board that I'm unaware of that already has what I need that's ready to go for under $8-10 or so?
Like I said I'm just wanting to have a bunch of cheap hardware to learn how to do the mesh and preferably want to keep the same pinouts to the LEDs and Buttons as n the nRF52 DK to keep things simple so there are fewer things that are different. That way I could use one firmware to work on both my boards and also the DK if I pick up more of those in the future.
Any suggestions and advice will be greatly appreciated!
I’m also going to try to figure out if I should build the code in Linux or windows. But I’ll save that for another question. I just figured I should get hardware moving first since it’ll take longer to get it going.
